Editorial: Bush takes his shot as peacemaker

Friday

Nov 30, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 30, 2007 at 1:08 AM

There's just something about American presidents in their last year. It's as if they wake up one morning with that nagging thought: What's that one thing I've forgotten to do? Wait, it'll come to me. Oh, yeah, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

There's just something about American presidents in their last year. It's as if they wake up one morning with that nagging thought: What's that one thing I've forgotten to do? Wait, it'll come to me. Oh, yeah, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Like the four presidents before him, George W. Bush is having his Mideast moment, bringing the two longtime enemies together this week in Annapolis, Md., along with representatives of some 40 other nations with a stake in that volatile region. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert walked away from the table expressing their commitment to a lasting peace and Palestinian statehood in 2008. They mean it this time. Really.

This gathering on American soil was actually historic, no small accomplishment in its own right. Representatives of 16 Arab League Nations came, and even Syria showed. That said, if the Middle East's history teaches us anything, it's that we shouldn't get our hopes up.

Indeed, because the list of obstacles to peace is significantly longer than the list of reasons for optimism, we'll start with the latter. Yasser Arafat is dead. Unfortunately, that's about it.

Conversely, neither Abbas nor Olmert operates from a position of strength. Neither enjoys the full or perhaps even majority support of his people. In Abbas' case, he shares power with the terrorist group Hamas, which swept to victory in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election, has never wavered in its goal to achieve Israel's extinction and was not invited to this conference. Its most rabid members were too busy firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel, anyway.

Meanwhile, Israeli settlements have grown on the West Bank, Olmert has been mired in scandal and few seem to trust the Palestinians to abide by the 'road map' established in 2003 that sets out the conditions for these talks.

While the presence of surrounding nations was encouraging in that it would seem to indicate a recognition that the Israelis and Palestinians need and will get help from their neighbors, some suggest it was just a smokescreen. What they really fear are Iran's ambitions and its attempts to achieve them by exploiting the Israeli-Palestinian divide. The Saudi foreign minister will forgive his role in fostering that perception, as his attendance was conditioned on not having to shake any Israeli hands.

Cynics also have questioned Bush's motives, saying that this is make-up for seven years of disengagement, that it's an attempt to deflect attention from his missteps in Iraq, that every president covets a Nobel. We'd prefer to think the president is just sincere about ending the violence, though we're wary of his inclination to overreach. 'The Middle East needs to have the liberty agenda prevail,' Bush said this week. At this point we'd settle for a stop-the-killing agenda. Let's pray he's laid the groundwork for this.

If not, it's quite the risk. Bill Clinton couldn't get this done in 2000, and what followed was a bloody, five-year intifada. This is a very high-stakes effort.

Sometimes we think the Palestinians should just be given their state with a wave and an 'it's all yours now,' whether they participate in crafting its boundaries or not. Problem is, we're not confident any amount of real estate would satisfy them short of occupying all of what is now Israel. Many continue to insist on a 'right of return.' But as historian Bernard Lewis quite logically noted in the Wall Street Journal this week, 'there is no compromise position between existing and not existing.' Israel will not negotiate itself into extinction. If that's the expectation of most Palestinians, there will be no peace, not in 2008, not ever.

Nonetheless, we will do what we always do at this point in a legacy-seeking, outgoing president's term: Hope against experience.

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